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announced new support for the
Eucon open Ethernet protocol.
It lets Pro Tools users expand
control surface options to include
Avid’s Artist series and Pro series
audio consoles and controllers.
Avid buried both the Euphonix
and Digidesign brands without
fanfare, as the company looks
to consolidate the success and
goodwill of those monikers under
the rubric that it goes by on
Wall Street. But credit Avid with
making feature changes and additions
to Pro Tools 9 in direct
response to customer input. Notably,
it includes automatic delay
compensation, which gives users
the ability to create mixes faster
and with increased alignment and
phase accuracy, without the need
to compensate manually for latencies
from hardware I/Os, internal
and external routing, and plug-in
algorithm processing.
Rupert Neve, who gave his
name to the company he founded
and later sold, was also at AES,
showing off Rupert Neve Designs’
new Portico 5024 Quad Mic Amp.
Based around custom transformers
and class-A topologies, the 5024
features four channels of Portico
series pre-amplification, independent
Silk controls, two channels
of DI inputs and an M-S decoder.
analoG icEBErG
The 5024 was the tip of an
emerging analog iceberg,
which is likely a backlash against
file-based music production and
distribution. Endless Analog’s
CLASP (Closed Loop Analog
Signal Processor) was a star at
the show. Its hybrid interface
lets Pro Tools and other DAWs
interface with analog tape machines.
For less than $10,000,
CLASP provides sample-accurate
tape synchronization with zero
latency analog monitoring and
delivers a true analog front-end
recording solution.
Analog’s resurgence was welcomed
by industry veterans, who
miss the format’s warmth, and
by indie 20-somethings. “They’ve
never been exposed to it before,
and when they hear it for the first
time, they immediately realize how
much better than digital analog
sounds,” said Mike Spitz, owner of
ATR Services and ATR Magnetics.
Analog 2.0 may never become
more than a niche, but combined
with a resurgence in vinyl sales,
it looks like a niche with legs.
That said, the digital domain
isn’t looking over its shoulder, as
there was plenty of new stuff in
that area. iZotope’s Nectar Vocal
Suite plug-in is a complete vocal
processing tool kit that includes
pitch correction, breath control,
compressors, de-esser, doubler,
saturation, EQ, gate, limiter, delay
and reverb modules. And if you
can’t imagine vocal processing
drilling down any further, check
out Nectar’s breath control target
mode, which lets users specify the
desired level of breaths detected
in the track.
It wouldn’t be pro audio without
new iPad apps. Neyrinck came
out with a pair: V-Control and
V-Control Pro, both multi-touch
controllers that provide access to
transport, editing and mixing functions
of any Pro Tools system connected
to a Wi-Fi network. Both
apps use the iPad surface and the
iOS operating system to provide
such features as a counter overlay,
swipe gesturing to bank channels
and a popover plug-in editor.
THE Mic SEGMEnT
Pro audio’s most robust link
to the past, though, is in the
industrial design of microphones,
1. JBL’s Peter Chaikin; 2. Line 6’s Simon
Jones (left) and Gary Coker; 3. Beyerdynamic’s
Paul Froula; 4. Tascam’s Jeff Laity;
5. The Avid booth; 6. An example of AES’s
growing resemblance to a NAMM show
which, despite some manufacturers
moving the A/D converter ever
further into the mic housing, remain
inherently analog. And the
show had some nice new ones.
Telefunken’s CU-29 Copperhead
condenser mic with vintage New
Old Stock (NOS) tube is part of
the R-F-T line and was designed
by the company’s in-house engineering
team. It’s based around
a circuit that features an NOS
Telefunken vacuum tube, custom
audio transformer and fixed cardioid
large-diaphragm capsule.
D.W. Fearn launched the
70dB VT-12 Vacuum Tube mic
pre, designed to accommodate the
low output level of ribbon and
dynamic microphones. The VT-12
1
can also be used with condenser
mics and includes a provision for
phantom powering.
All in all, the 129th AES Convention
showed the resilience of
an industry sector that’s been
hammered by declining music
sales and the departure of record
labels — whose largesse funded
four decades of madness, money
and some very good music. Some
other pro audio channels, especially
broadcast and installed systems,
remain robust, as do their trade
shows — NAB and InfoComm,
respectively. But combined with
its strong conference agenda this
year, AES got through 2010 on
its own two feet, and these days,
that’s saying a lot. MI
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JANUARY 2011 I MUSIC INC. I 39